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Letters
received during the week
of 20 July
"You did
not choose me, but I have chosen you..."
ONCE
AGAIN YOU HAVE SAID IN A REFRESHING and
probing way what
so few are willing or able to say. "What
is the Anglican Communion?" The real issue, as you
say, is our relationship to Jesus Christ. If we are in communion
with Him, are we not necessarily in communion with one another,
whether we
want to be or not? And to take the point further, are we not in
communion with him, whether we want to be or not. Communion is
established from
his side, not ours: "I, when I am lifted up will draw all to myself..." "You
did not choose me, but I have chosen you..." As your reflection on
circles last week suggests, we are free to draw a circle that leaves
him out,
but he has drawn one that takes us in-- all of us, whatever "Communion" we
choose to call ourselves, or whatever position on any issue we
happen to take. If indeed "he has broken down the dividing wall, that
is the hostility between us" and created "in himself one new humanity",
is not that the greater truth we have to proclaim, rather than
who likes, looks,
or agrees with whom?
The idea of
communion, as we so often discuss it, is a very strange thing. I am supposedly
in communion with Anglicans in Africa and Australia (and in the United
States) who have ideas very different from mine, whose churches I probably
would not like attending very much, and who probably would equally dislike
attending mine. Meanwhile I am supposedly not in communion with some Roman
Catholics with whom I do agree very much and who often attend my church
and receive communion. I also often attend their church, but don't receive
communion because I know that the official position is that I shouldn't,
and as a clergyman in a small town, I don't want to cause scandal. It
all begins to seem rather silly.
I'm not sure
what the Anglican Communion is (as much as I love being an Anglican),
or what it means to be in or out of communion. Increasingly, all that
makes sense to me is this amazing single humanity that has been created
by Jesus, the crucified one who has drawn us all to himself; and the uncomfortable
truth that as I accept him, he will continually pry open my heart wider
and wider, forcing me to make room even for those whose views and theology
and behavior seem shocking and disagreeable to me.
The Rev. Edgar
Wallace
St. Matthias
Minocqua, Wisconsin
edgarwallace@stmatthiasminocqua.org
21 July 2003
Who does Gene Robinson think he
is?
I
HAVE BEEN READING THE NEWS on
your website for
a while and find it very informative. However, I was appalled to
read some of the comments
made by Gene Robinson in his interview by Chris Hastings and
Elizabeth Day on your link to the News.telegraph.[Ed. story
here] Who does he think he is telling England that "God
wants gay priests in the Church of England?" And contrary to
his comment to the Telegraph that "God was paving the way for
the acceptance of homosexuals within the Church just as he
had done with women
and ethnic monorities", the same tactics may have been used
but homosexuals are not in the same category as being a woman
or being
a member of an ethnic minority as being a woman or a member
of an ethnic minority is not sinful whereas living a homosexual
lifestyle
is.
Linda
Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Berwick, ME USA
22 July 2003
Needed: prayers for Archbishop
Rowan
THANK
YOU FOR YOUR MESSAGE of
reasonableness and comfort.
As many people in our Church (the Anglican Church/Communion/Family)
seem to be playing
the game of who is better than whom, you provide a beacon of calm
through this stormy time. It seems that much of this fighting could
be avoided if everyone kept to the concept, pointed out in your
article this week, that national churches are in communion with Canterbury,
and through Canterbury with each other, and may be more or less
in
agreement with fellow churches without sundering the fabric of
Anglicanism. In our local church of about 2,000 members, we pray
each Sunday for
Archbishop Rowan, and I hope others are doing the same. He surely
has his work cut out for him.
Thanks again
for your intelligent, grounded commentary.
William Deitenbeck
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
Gainesville, Florida, USA
deitenb@gru.net
24 July 2003
Dressing to hide ... is it
abdication?
A
QUERULOUS QUOTIDIAN QUERY: In the midst of a flurry of far more important questions
and issues, I write to make an observation on episcopal dress. I
noticed in the photo of the May meeting of Primates in Brazil that
both the ABC and the US Primate are wearing black shirts under their
pectoral crosses. Romans have been doing this for a decade or more.
In both cases, my observation stems from my work with the Grubb Institute
of Behavioral Studies, based in London, and the words of the Rev.
Bruce Reed, founder and guru of that fine organization: Why are so
many priests, and now bishops, reluctant to accept both their authority
and the relevant trappings of that authority?
Priests
have always worn black shirts; bishops have worn some verion of purple.
Are the
current black-shirted bishops embarrassed by how they appear?
Do they want us to think they're "just folks" like the rest of the clergy?
Do they think they appear more "relevant" if they eschew purple in
public? Do they think they're therefore more humble, less attracted
to "show," or that they don't need outer signs of their inner convictions?
Does it occur to any of them that their dress is not for their person,
but for their office? Does it occur to them that part of taking up
their role as bishops requires them not just to "be" bishops but
to "be seen" as bishops? Are they ducking out on a simple but serious
responsibility of their offfices and ministries by unilaterally refusing
to look like bishops?
I believe
we live in a world where people are crying for "priests to be priests" and "bishops to be bishops." I
think the way deacons, priests, and bishops indicate a bit of their
acceptance of their roles is physically to appear as if they do.
[Clergy also often wear shirts and ties rather than clerical collars,
a similar authority problem, part of which comes across as "don't
mind me, I'm just a priest disguised as a normal person."] For two
of the top leaders of our Communion to present themselves as not
accepting the physical, distinctive appearance that tradition dictates
is, to me, an abdication of part of their authority as well as an
endorsement of sending strongly mixed signals about their roles in
the Church and in society. [And if the pectoral cross on the chain,
normally tucked out of sight in a pocket as if they were ashamed
of having it seen at all, is a mark of a bishop, we know that thousands
of priests also were crosses on chains -- under black shirts.] Thanks
for sustaining this very minor rant!
Peter Winterble
St. Ignatius of Antioch, Manhattan
New York, NY, USA
Wryter47@yahoo.com
24 July 2003
Editor's
note for mathematicians:
Our letter
last week used some mathematical terms, but given the nature of our
audience, we did not use the precision that is customary in the world
of mathematics.
Several readers asked about it. Our point was that only an equivalence
relation can partition a set; "in communion with" is not an equivalence
relation
because it
is not
transitive. Therefore the Anglican Communion, supposedly defined by
"in communion with", cannot exist in a formal sense. Another point
is that only autonomous provinces have the right type to participate
in the "in communion with" relation; whether it is an equivalence relation
or not, it is not defined on the set of communicants, or parishes,
or bishops, or dioceses, or hymnals. "A is in communion with B" is
defined only for A and B in the set of autonomous provinces.
Earlier
letters
We
launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May
2003. All of our letters are in our
archives.
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